Chapter 45
Brant
In some ways we are so close to everything, to a life in which one starts and the other finishes, a joining so complete that we are one. In other ways…
We are a world apart.
Lies. Lies are keeping us apart. I started this relationship with one lie, a part of my past that I have locked away and hoped she would never find out about. She started this relationship clean and innocent, and has piled on the lies since then.
I want to rid us of all of the lies, wipe our slate clean with one confession session. But I am terrified to tell her my secret. And I am terrified to hear her tell me hers. I know it, but I don’t want it spoken, don’t want it any truer than what I already know.
I just want to know why. Why does she cheat on me? What do I not provide for her? What part of me is not good enough? Why, when her love for me burns bright enough to singe… does she sneak off with a stranger? My biggest fear is that she loves him. My biggest fear is that he has wormed his way into her heart.
I love her too much to share her. I hate him with a vengeance that turns my blood white.
I’ve had her followed. Met with a private investigator and had him spend a month tailing her. But she was too smart, his report revealing that she has spent time with only one man: me. Now, I have Jillian watching her. Tasked with finding out anything and everything about the man who holds the love of my life in his hands.
I am an intelligent man. I have been called calculating. But I am not cold; I am not unfeeling. My love burns as bright as hers, as does my possession. But my anger, my emotion, doesn’t simmer on the surface. It hides, in wait, for the moment when it needs to erupt.
